Baluchistan latest epicenter of attacks on Pakistani press

It
is one step forward and two steps back in Pakistan's restive Baluchistan
province. The nation's highest court has acknowledged the dangerous climate
journalists face in Baluchistan, but it has also affirmed a directive that only
adds to the pressure cooker conditions that journalists work under.

Last
week, Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry affirmed
the Baluchistan High Court's order to bar news coverage of banned groups, which
has caused tension among journalists. The
order restricts the media from publishing or airing news items that cover
banned groups or project their views. Journalists, however, are under
intense pressure to report in line with the views of various militants and
separatists. Now, pressure is being exerted from the other side as well.

"It
has become very difficult to work in such a stifling climate of threats," Essa
Tareen, president of the Baluchistan Union of Journalists, told CPJ by phone. "Just
today, we received news of a case where a journalist named Nadeem Garginari, a
senior journalist and the president of Khuzdar Press Club, was targeted by
miscreants just minutes ago. One of his sons was killed and another injured in
the incident," he told CPJ. CPJ is investigating possible motives in the attack
to determine if it is connected to Garginari's work as a journalist.

Instead
of providing relief to journalists, authorities recently lodged complaints to
the police (or first information reports, as they are known in much of South
Asia) against them for staging a sit-in to protest the murder of Abdul Haq
Baloch last month in Khuzdar and the breakdown of law and order in the region, Tareen
said.

Noting
this lack of law and order, Pakistan's Supreme Court issued an interim order
last week asking the federal government to take effective measures to protect
the lives and property of the people in Baluchistan, stating that the
provincial government has been unable to maintain control. Chief Justice Chaudhry said incidents of
targeted killings were taking place on a daily basis and that journalists were
not safe there, according to news
reports.

Baluchistan--Pakistan's
largest province by area, but smallest by population--is mired in a separatist
movement, a conflict that has existed since the inception of Pakistan in 1947. The
province is plagued by sectarian strife, tribal feuds, and criminal activity,
with daily disappearances and targeted killings. On top of that, the capital,
Quetta, and its surrounding towns are rearguard headquarters and staging areas
for the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and other groups fighting in Afghanistan. According
to official figures,
at least 868 people have been killed, 619 kidnapped, and 2,390 gone missing
from the province since 2010.

Journalists there face pressure from a number of sources: pro-Taliban groups
and Pakistani security forces and intelligence agencies, as well as Baluch
separatists and state-sponsored anti-separatist militant groups. The province
receives scant international media attention amid the rest of Pakistan's
political turbulence. But if Pakistan is one of the deadliest countries for journalists,
then Baluchistan has become one of the country's hubs of hazard. CPJ research shows that this year
alone, five journalists have been targeted and killed for their work in
Pakistan--three of them in Baluchistan. More than a dozen journalists have been
killed in the province since 2008. Local groups tend to put the numbers of
journalists killed higher, but because of the political turmoil it is often
impossible to discern the reason for an attack as many journalists straddle the
line between political activism and reporting.

Just
last month, Baloch, also a longtime local
correspondent for ARY Television, was shot by unidentified assailants. Hamid
Mir, a prominent Pakistani journalist, wrote
after Haq's death that the journalist had been threatened by the state-sponsored
Baloch Musalah Diffa Army in November 2011 and had subsequently been named on a
hit list issued by its spokesman.

Haq's
family declined to discuss widespread assertions by his colleagues that he was
killed because security forces were angry that he was working with the families
of missing Baluchis on presenting cases before a court.

While the government announced that a judicial commission will be set up to ascertain the facts about Haq's murder, no information has surfaced to
date. Past instances have shown that commissions and inquiries such as these
are mainly symbolic, and few, if any, concrete steps are taken to address the
impunity that exists in Pakistan. The country is ranked 10th on CPJ's Impunity Index, which spotlights places where journalists
are murdered regularly and their killers go free.

Conditions
continue to look bleak for journalists operating in the province, as they do
across Pakistan. Earlier this year, CPJ expressed
concerns that the issues faced by journalists are inextricably linked to larger
endemic problems in Pakistan, and applauded efforts by the Human Rights
Commission of Pakistan to draw attention to the "constant cloud of intimidation
and violence" under which journalists live. The chief justice's recent
acknowledgment only adds to the resounding chorus demanding a change in the
forecast.

Sumit Galhotra is the research associate for CPJ's Asia program. He served as CPJ's inaugural Steiger Fellow and has worked for CNN International, Amnesty International USA, and Human Rights Watch. He has reported from London, India, and Israel and the Occupied Territories, and specializes in human rights and South Asia.

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